Needed: tailors for our fascists

People who know me would balk at the thought that I would do anything that would remotely help the saffron brigade (specifically talking about the RSS, Bajrang Dal and the VHP etc)…..but dangerous as they are for the unity of this country, and lunatics that I consider them to be, I cant help but feel pity for them whenever I come across a picture of their rallies or when I see some of them walking in some parks in Delhi (when I am there) doing their ridiculous little exercises (reminds me of my PT sessions in class V)……

Why pity? I mean look at the dress they wear….they are the supposed foot soldiers of the Hindu Gods and they wear knickers that the famed ‘thulla’ would feel embarrassed in….God’s foot soldiers conjure up images of crusaders and Jihadis with their flashing swords and of epic battles between the Saracens and the Franks…..but that, to many is ancient history, so let me compare our Desi fascists with the most famous fascists of them all…..the foot soldiers of the Aryan God, the Nazis…..

Alright first of all compare a typical Nazi dress with the Indian RSS dress….the Nazis wore smart military uniform, even the ones who were not strictly military wore dresses that had the military look (the SS for one)….from the cap or beret at the top to shining boots below, that’s the image of the typical Nazi that has come down to us. The Indian Nazi on the other hand wears Khaki knickers and a cap and both of them are extremely bad fitting….the physique of the typical RSS guy is so pathetic (either someone with stick legs or someone with huge paunch, with no middle guy) that the dress looks ridiculous on them. The style of the knickers usually is such that they are trapezium shaped with the longer base below, with the result that there is a lot of scope for ventilation from below…..on top of that a white shirt (a typical peon dress of yore only the knickers were full pants) and a cap that pretends hard to be a beret……

Next look at the behaviors of the two on the field….we all know the crisp Nazi salute, the smart clicking of boots, the steely gaze and the absolute discipline of its ranks (it was one of the most disciplined army of all time surely comparable to the Roman Legions), a Prussian legacy no doubt…..anybody who has seen the videos of the Nuremberg rallies will have no doubt of their hypnotic quality, the torch lit rallies inspire a sense of awe…..the fact is that even who you hate them with all your living breath, you cant help admiring their imagery and you cannot doubt their awe-inspiring quality….

Now what about their compatriots in India? look at their salute, it’s a cross between the Nazi salute and the Roman legionary one without the romance and dread of either…..the poor guys do try their hardest to look menacing when they salute, but coupled with their ridiculous dress and their salute, it might as well might have been a vaudeville act….

And after all this, these poor guys wonder why their membership shrinks everyday (except in Gujarat of course, which perhaps has the highest per capita number of swords and Trishuls in the country) and why the average age of their ranks keeps going up every year….that is why they either have to manufacture riots and when a Narendra Modi is not available, try and protest against non-events like Valentine’s day….

The reason why fascists had succeeded in the last century (and are on the rise in some countries again, albeit with different colours and sounds) was because they shrewdly married economic dreams of the populace with military discipline and unity. People often wanted both because most of all they wanted security and young democracies often seemed weak and seemed unable to deliver anything in a hurry. India is not a young democracy of course but it has large chinks in its armour that can be (and are) exploited by people for their own interests…..but RSS loses out because neither does it have respectable solidity and discipline nor does it have a sane economic argument or thesis of its own….its marketing guys never bothered about the image that people had about it, which is very important, given the image consciousness of people even in small towns and villages, which is the favourite hunting grounds for our fascists (for its cannon fodder ie). In fact the guys in these camps are looked at with derision and contempt and their absurdities are mocked at….they are fascists but they don’t generate the dread that is the fascists‘s main weapon (except when they are on the rampage in Gujarat but that was an experiment that boomeranged on them)….

So what should be the first step towards transforming their lathi parties to a Nuremberg rally? Give a call to Rina Dhaka….

But then our fascists never listen to a “pseudo-secularist” (a Bushite logic – if you are not saffron, you are pseudo) like me….which is just as well….